Is Iran getting reckless?

0:00Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0, depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments.

0:37You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash start now. That's growtherapy.com slash start now. growtherapy.com slash start now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

1:19Mod.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Modafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Modafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate, and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy.

2:01To learn more, go to mod.com. Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider, and if approved, ModAlert ships straight to your door. Go to mod.com to get started. That's M-O-D dot com.

2:44of the Wall Street Journal. And I'm Katie Pauls, Washington editor and columnist for the Times and Sunday Times. This week, we're looking at the fallout from the incident at RAF Fairfax, but in particular, what it tells us about the state of America's continuing war with Iran and where it may be headed next. Also, we're going to look at the extraordinary and disturbing story of the death penalty attempt that's failed twice in Tennessee. And we'll also talk about the remarkable story of Doge. Let's start, Katie, with that continuing set of questions, really, about the arrests more than a week ago now at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and what's come since then.

3:29We've obviously had the report that the U.S. has pulled most of its bombers, the B-1 stealth bombers away from there. This, according to Donald Trump, who spoke about this this week, in response to a direct threat that the United States says has been leveled at the base and leveled at those bombers in particular. They've been moved. There's continuing back and forth, both within the Trump administration and across the Atlantic, between the Trump administration and Andy Burnham's government about how serious the threat is. And indeed, whether or not, of Of course, Iran is behind it. It does sound as though from everything we're hearing, although there's no confirmation that there has been some kind of an Iran plot against that base, perhaps more broadly against U.S.

4:14and U.S. and allied targets around the world. We're pretty confident now that there are Iranian efforts to, if you like, to respond to the war in the Gulf to actually to try to attack targets, U.S. targets around the world. and widen the conflict, which has always been a big fear. What are you hearing in Washington? What's the scale of the threat from Iran? So first off, I just think when it comes to the RAF story, it still feels as though we don't quite have the full picture. But we, of course, do have some core themes and, you know, tenets of knowledge in terms of what has come out so far. And it's a story that has been dominating the news in the US, perhaps even more so than it has been in the UK.

5:00You look at obviously what happened the week before that we talked about in the podcast, which was this suspected attack on RAF Fairford. The fact that you had these figures arrested, later revealed one had called themselves in, they were released on bail. Certainly the US administration response to being released on bail was, this is very strange, why are you releasing these guys on bail. Then, of course, you have the removal of the planes. And we've had mixed messages from the administration so far when it comes to why this has happened. You have Marco Rivio ultimately playing it down, suggesting that this is routine to move such aircrafts.

5:41And we're only focusing on it because of what happened the week before. The only reason why you guys are focused on how many planes are at Fairfield is because of the threat that happened last week but it's not unusual to see rotations happen and movement of assets to different parts of the world based on exercises redeployments people changing out and new people coming in new planes coming in old planes going out which is true there is quite more focusing on it um because there's a feeling that it could all be joined up and then of course donald trump um coming out with a line which is there was a perception of a threat and that's where they've moved.

6:14They didn't fly out by accident. Yeah, no, but there was some threats. And rather than tempting the enemy, we'll capture the enemy and beat the enemy. But why should we leave them there? So we moved them around a little bit, not very far. And I think to your point, Jerry, while we're still, you know, waiting to kind of, I think, for the fullest picture to come out from this, it does feel as though there are concerns about a drone attack. It does obviously feel so from what everyone is saying that the threat is used to come from the Iranians. There are some saying, is it a proxy threat? Was it a dry run, the initial attack, which is why some of these figures were let out on bail?

6:55Were they testing to see what the reactions were? Or was it the Iranians ultimately ready to go with something? And we don't yet have it, but I think it is pointing to the sense, which is the Iran war has obviously been going on for more than six months when you think about lots of the reasons you would or would not go to war with Iran one of the cons has always been what type of network do they have outside of the country and therefore if you know one of the things that I've been picking up from American politicians is they're saying well the UK is less good at knowing what is coming in and out of their country and they would include people in that and so is it easier to hurt America in these other places and is that part of the new threat of warfare that we're seeing?

7:42Well, yeah. And so a couple of things. I mean, one, obviously, the US has been pulled from its bases. A lot of its bases in the Middle East, we know a lot of them were damaged, probably more damaged than was initially acknowledged at the time. So the US, to those bases that were vulnerable in places like Iraq and Kuwait and Qatar, have been significantly scaled down. So those targets for Iran are probably harder to hit. So obviously, the massive US network of bases around the world, which are somewhat probably less securely, less secure, presumably become more of a target. What's interesting to me, Katie, and I've had interesting conversations with people on both sides of this argument in the last week, is whether if it is Iran, there's long been a fear, concern that Iran has this network of sort of sleeper cells around the world kind of ready to activate.

8:32So it was one of the many, many things that was always talked about when previous administrations or Israeli governments have talked about the possibility of attacking Iran, would it trigger a massive, massive wave of terrorist attacks around the world against military US bases or allied bases or indeed against civilian targets? And what's interesting to me, Kate, is that, again, if it's a sign of that, if it's a harbinger of that, the question is, is this Iran operating, and if it does do this, Will it be operating from a position of strength or from a position of weakness? I mean, I've had a conversation with someone in the last week who thinks this is a sort of sign of desperation of Iran.

9:11We know now that the Strait of Hormuz has been quite significantly reopened and oil is flowing again, while Iran itself is unable to get its oil out. So it's really being squeezed. Is this a sign that Iran is actually maybe, you know, kind of having to resort to increasingly kind of reckless and ultimately not very successful measures? Or by contrast, is it a sign of strength? I mean, is Iran this is the kind of longstanding threat that we've always lived with? And are they activating that in a way that might again, sorry to say this, but could be a harbinger of a much wider kind of terrorist war?

9:49You know, again, we haven't seen significant, we haven't seen any significant attacks on this scale yet. And, you know, that's going to be obviously the question as we go forward, where security is being heightened, that's going to be the question very much on policymakers' minds. Yeah. And I think to your point, Jerry, we don't have the answer yet, because if these attacks, again, if you can confirm the link to Iran and then also they execute them of success and you are dealing with a fallout, the fallout from these, then, of course, you can start to say this is a successful method of warfare, of escalating or reaching out.

10:28So, yes, it probably speaks to the fact that they're struggling in the more traditional places. But if you do start to see these attacks, then clearly is a way to get to their allies. At the moment, we've had one foiled attack, whoever it was by. And you've had the Americans moving potentially because there could have been another. And then it comes to the flight that you mentioned. Of course, that was stopped. I think that one of the things that we're hearing comparisons with has been, you know, was the drone attack that was potentially planned, something which could mirror what we saw the Ukrainians do to the Russians with drones.

11:06And I think with modern warfare, there's definitely something that you often hear from defence figures, which is there is now more of an ability to, you know, to strike from far away and to get into these places. And that is something, you know, all sides are going to have to grapple with. I guess it also speaks to the general state of the Iran war, which, Jerry, we hear a lot about at the moment just in relation to the midterms. The fact that it is, you know, directly blamed for pushing up gas diesel prices. But also Trump in his speeches will say, you know, that he doesn't think there'll be a deal till after you get through the midterms.

11:45What's your sense of kind of the general play and how this fits into it? Yeah, I mean, you know, as we said, it does sound as though the strata form is – conditions in the strata form are trending in a much better direction for the US and for the rest of us as oil and other products are flowing out there. That we still, however, as we've kind of known now for some time, the actual availability of crude oil has not been the primary issue in terms of the impact on consumers because it's the capacity of the refining capacity, the damage that's been done to that, not only in that region, but of course in Russia and elsewhere, which has pushed up the positive refined products.

12:31And that's not really changing. And, you know, here, Katie, as you well know, and you've spent some time out in the country, diesel prices are at their highest level ever, ever recorded here. And that is, you know, if you're a farmer, a small business person, anybody who runs diesel vehicles, it's really hitting really very, very hard. And some of these states that we've talked about in the last few weeks, Katie, that seem to be now much more competitive, farm states in the West, in the Midwest, this seems to be a big factor. And that isn't changing. So even if the fortunes of war, as it were, may be improving somewhat for the US, the impact on American consumers and the unpopularity of the war is not changing.

13:16And it's still looking pretty grim. And, you know, again, we've talked about this, but that battleground does seem to be widening the state midterm elections, which are now less than four weeks away. That battleground does seem to be widening to some of these deep, deep red states, Republican states. And again, it is unhappiness with the war, unhappiness with consumer prices, unhappiness with gas prices that seems to be driving that. It's quite interesting, of course. Donald Trump has been out on the campaign trail somewhat as a question mark about whether or not that's a good thing for Republicans or a bad thing.

13:53It is striking the number of Republicans who don't seem to want to be seen campaigning with him. I'm not sure if we talked about this before, but there was a controversy, of course, last week when the government started issuing the so-called public service announcements, which were basically campaign ads for Donald Trump saying Donald Trump had turned the country around and saved him. Quote, using quotes from a speech that he gave back in the 2024 election. Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America once and for all.

14:29America will never be a communist country. A nakedly political, just a nakedly political act paid for by the federal government, which, of course, is completely against electoral law. And, you know, even some Republicans dared to put their heads above the parapet on this and say, I don't think this is quite right. We probably shouldn't be spending using taxpayer money for political campaigns. Well, of course, Donald Trump did actually did interestingly has backed down on that. And a rare U-turn. Yeah, and very rarely he issued a truth social statement saying, let me see if I can quote it. The radical left is upset with the fact that I'm taking ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our great USA and paying for them with USA money.

15:16This is a rather standard thing to do, he says. But rather than doing that, although nothing will make them happy, I've decided to do the patriotic ads, among others, and pay for them myself with money I raised for MAGA. Interesting story on the wind that clearly he is under, you know, he's backed off there in a way that perhaps six months ago he never would have. Yeah, I had Republicans bringing this up with me last week when I was just out and about in D.C. and, you know, saying that, you know, at times they wondered if Donald Trump was actively trying to lose the midterms for them with various missteps.

15:52Now, there are also other Republicans who really do think that he's still their best card. But in the list of the kind of things that they were worried about Trump doing or citing as and another thing, the Iran war always comes first. But they did mention these adverts. And I think there was also a bit of bewilderment because ultimately, one thing the Republican Party is not struggling with at the moment, as far as we can see, is money. They've been fundraising a lot. They keep talking about having this huge war chest. I think it's 400 million, which they can use in the campaigns. So therefore, the question was being posed as why bother even using a taxpayer when you're potentially going to have such backlash that you're going to have to spend even more money trying to clean it up than if you just paid for your adverts in the first place.

16:36Yeah, I think it's classic. I think it was classic Trump. He just did it because, you know, he sort of wants to stick it to people and to show that he can break the rules and get away with it. Right, we're going to take a break. And when we're back, we'll be talking about the death penalty, how that debate is playing out across America. And we'll have an and finally on the inside story of Doge. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text.

17:10You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average$21 with insurance and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the U.S. offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability.

17:50And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash start now. That's growtherapy.com slash start now. growtherapy.com slash start now availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan mod.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore here's what's actually happening coffee only briefly blocks adenosine the chemical that tires you out when it stops working your system is flooded and you crash Modafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way.

18:43Modafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate, and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy. To learn more, go to mod.com. Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider, and if approved, ModAlert ships straight to your door. Go to mod.com to get started. That's M-O-D dot com.

19:22Now it's an age-old debate in the USA, but the death penalty debate is back in the forefront after the Pentagon announced that they were backing the firing squad for the Fort Hood shooter. And we've also had the continuing fallout from the botched execution of Krista Pike. Gerry, does it feel different in terms of where the conversation is going than, you know, in previous times when these type of cases have been in the news? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know, the political saliency of the death penalty kind of comes and goes over time. And, you know, sometimes you get particularly horrendous episodes that come up and it becomes important again.

20:02And this is these two two cases, interestingly, coming up at the same time are really fascinating. I think tell us tell us tell us so many interesting things about about America. I think a lot of people, you know, look at America on the death penalty and think, oh, my God, it's sort of barbaric. I think America kills more people still by the death penalty than certainly than any other. I think maybe Japan per head kills more people than obviously countries in the Middle East and Africa executed a lot of people. But obviously the death penalty is non-existent in Western Europe and elsewhere. And I think there's still a sense that this is a very – this is a kind of frontier justice and sort of rough and ready.

20:40And some states obviously execute many more people than others. And one of the things, by the way, a lot of people often don't know is that many states have outlawed the death penalty and indeed have outlawed the death penalty long before countries like Britain and Europe did. So it's always an interesting – as with America, an interesting sort of patchwork about how the death penalty is applied if it's applied at all. And so what's interesting about this, so we have the Krista Pike case in Tennessee. This woman who, first thing it must be said, committed this and was convicted of this absolutely horrendous murder of, I think, a college, sort of a college mate.

21:15Just unbelievable savagery and brutality was convicted of murder as usual. Walked around with some of the bone. Right, right. Just unbelievably grotesque. She has spent years, as usual, on death row as her lawyers go through all various appeals and try to exhaust, try to make it, you know, try and try and extend the process. And of course, they finally got to the execution last week. And Tennessee uses lethal injection, as most states who do execute now do. And the lethal injection was insufficient first time. And she didn't die. Did it again second time and she didn't die. She's now, I believe, in a coma.

21:56So they now have this is a real conundrum on so many levels. First of all, you know, is this cruel and unusual punishment? The Constitution outlaws cruel and unusual punishment. Well, you know, putting someone, bringing someone into the into the death chamber, the execution chamber, sort of, you know, and failing to execute them and then bringing them back. So I think qualifies in anybody's book as cruel and unusual punishment, a kind of unbelievably hideous torture. But it's worth thinking a little bit about why this happened. And I think one of the main reasons this happened is because of the quite successful campaign of people against the death penalty over the years, they've made it quite difficult for states actually to find the right method to execute.

22:40Many drugs that have been used in lethal injections have been outlawed. Companies won't let their drugs be used because they don't like the protests or they don't like the lawsuits that they get. under the rules, I think, of the American Medical Association. Doctors can't participate in executions. So it's actually, you know, it sounds sort of rather macabre, but it's actually quite difficult to get people executed because the right combination of drugs has to be found, the right dosage of drugs has to be found. You have to get the right person to administer the execution. And I think this is what happened in this case, where clearly they didn't have a sufficiently lethal cocktail for Krista Pike.

23:20And this is, and again, and now they're in a terrible state. There's a state because they can't really execute someone who's in a coma, which is what she is. But I think it's interesting, Katie, what just interested me about this is just the, you know, that this is, this just is how effective in some ways the campaign against execution has been, even in a state like Tennessee. It's interesting that even though people think, I think that people are being executed in America all the time for, you know, murder and whatnot. It's actually, the campaign against it has been effective in reducing the number of executions.

23:55And then, you know, sort of unfortunately and rather, as I say, rather bizarrely and weirdly in a macabre way ends up resulting in something like this. Yeah. And, Jerry, you mentioned, obviously, that lethal injection has become the most common way to do this in many states. But then you contrast this with the Fort Hood story. And this is, of course, the former U.S. Army major who fatally shot 13 unarmed U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, injuring another 32 in the process, Nadel Hassan. The announcement this week was about how he will face firing squad. And it was quickly celebrated across the mega sphere.

24:39lots of Republicans also coming out and saying, you know, this is what we want to see. Obviously, it's a slightly, it is a different setup, it's a different situation, but there's going to be less room for things to go wrong in a firing squad. Yeah, I mean, I think, again, these are difficult things to talk about. But I believe from just, you know, reading and looking at some of the case studies here, that actually firing squad is probably the most, it may not be the one, one hesitates to use words like humane, but it may be the most certain way of ensuring that somebody's executed. I mean, the history of execution is obviously fascinating.

25:17You know, the guillotine was introduced in France in what was in the late 18th century because it was much more humane than beheading, which, you know, we all used to do in the Middle Ages, the regular beheading with an ax, I should say. You know, then we had hanging, But, you know, that sometimes doesn't work. You've had the I mean, when we had the electric chair in the United States, which was deemed to be this, you know, going to be the much more efficient way of killing people. We've absolutely seen awful, horrendous misfires, dare I say, with the electric chair, which have resulted in, you know, just these most gruesome stories.

25:53So it's you know, it's it's a fascinating thing that it seems to be much harder to put someone to death than you might think. By the way, at a time when countries around the world are adopting euthanasia, you think in great numbers, you wonder what's going on. The firing squad thing with this guy Hassan, I mean, it is interesting. By the way, I think that Krista Pike in Tennessee did actually ask to be executed by firing squad, but it's not available under Tennessee procedures. So, yeah, look, again, it's a sort of a macabre topic, but this is what happens. And your point, you know, is a good one that it's not, you know, it just it just is it just there probably isn't a humane way to put someone to death.

26:37And we should probably all we should probably all reflect on that. Now, finally, Gerry, I interviewed Michael Lewis this week about his new book, Blockers, Rebels in the Deep State. And this is a tome all about that brief period in the second term of the Trump administration, which feels a little long ago now, where we had Doge. And this was full fat Doge. They talked about it during the campaign trail. soon after um you know donald trump's victory you had elon musk speaking at cpac um conference of a chainsaw on stage talking about all the waste he was going to cut there was potentially one trillion two trillion dollars of waste cut um what actually happened was you know some quite high electric stunts um lots of doge which tend to be quite young um tech boys storming government buildings.

27:29You had US aid obviously disbanded. You had civil servants receiving an email saying, what did you do this week? But it did all really end in tears when Elon Musk fell out with Trump. It all ended pretty abruptly. They didn't actually cut much. Elon Musk fell out with various members of the cabinet. He is now fairly back in the fold. He's advising the Pentagon on some projects. And he's also donating to the Republican Party again. but this book is quite interesting because we see Michael Lewis not just speaking to some figures in Doge on the condition of anonymity he also speaks to the civil servants that unlikely you know fighters on the other side who tried to stop it I think we can hear a few clips now of what he said to me I mean I had people telling me that they went to work in the morning and as they were going up the elevator a Doge guy in that in a towel without anything else dripping wet got into the elevator to go from the base where he was taking a shower to the sixth floor where he was going to get dressed.

28:28They thought it was fun to treat the federal government like a startup. I mean, Elon now he slept in the room. He had a little kid's playpen brought in for his kid. So, Jerry, we have the young men who all lived basically in a floor in one of the government buildings along with Elon Musk sometimes to create that startup atmosphere, but would have to go downstairs that we just had to have a shower. And then the public officials who are pretty aghast at the whole thing. What were your main takeaways when it came to the Doge project? I've got two broad reflections on it, really. One is, look, President Trump was elected in part.

29:05He talked a lot about this during his election to reduce the size of the federal government. And, you know, there was a strong support for that. The federal government has bloated. There's no question, you know, even getting the federal government back down to the levels it was at in terms of staff and staffing levels in 2016 would be an extraordinary achievement. And, you know, things have moved on. Why on earth we need a much larger federal government 10 years on from last time. So I'm sympathetic to the objectives of Doge. And I find the idea that there were people, you know, sort of heroically kind of standing in the way of this, you know, of this attempt by a government that had been elected to help produce the government.

29:43I find that in many ways, I'm not kind of a deep state conspiracist, particularly, But that to me says, you know, there's a lot to the argument that there are people in the federal government and in the state bureaucracy and the bureaucracy who are acting directly against the interests of the elected representatives. And I think that is a problem. The larger problem, though, with Doge Katie was that, look, if you're going to reduce if you're going to reduce the size of the federal government, this is such it's always the siren call of people who say, you know, we can cut out fraud, waste and abuse.

30:16Right. That's the triad, you know, the triad, the deadly triad that supposedly afflicts government. And of course, there's fraud, waste and abuse. But you're not going to do that. You're not going to get anything like the scale of reductions that you need. If you really want to get control of the Leviathan of the federal government, which spends two trillion dollars, what it is, you're not going to be doing that by, you know, cutting out programs here and there or going after woke ideas in the federal government. good though that may be to go after them, you've got to address the big, big reasons why the federal government has grown so bloated.

30:47And that's to do with basically boring stuff, frankly, like the explosion, like demographics, which have led to a huge increase in Social Security spending and Medicare spending for older people, big increase in Medicaid spending, which has helped for the poor and some of the other. And those are the primary drivers of the growth of the federal government. And the idea that you were going to you weren't going to touch those. And Donald Trump came in saying, basically, I'm not going to touch any of these so-called entitlement programs, these things that are really driving the government to this size.

31:18And what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to bring in this brilliant man who's going to bring me trillions of dollars of savings by eliminating unnecessary government programs. It was always completely for the birds. And what did he end up finding? Claiming he was going to find two trillion dollars worth of savings. And he found, what, maybe 50, 60 billion. So that's that's the to me, the larger issue is not, you know, whether or not they should have been trying to shut down particular programs. And you had these brave government officials standing in their way. The larger the larger point is that the whole thing, frankly, was a sort of slightly performative exercise that wasn't going to address.

31:52You know, what a metaphor for Donald Trump, frankly, a performative exercise that gets a lot of attention and doesn't address any of the fundamental issues that face the country. If you think about some figures like Russell Boyk, for example, this is a longtime ally of Donald Trump who works on budget responsibility and has had a lot of time to think about how to cut down government. It's almost, you know, a life's mission. And you had a few figures like that. For example, you think about Project 2025, that, you know, document that came to haunt Donald Trump in 2024. But it was lots of essays of what figures in Trump world would do if they got in.

32:30And Michael Lewis is clearly pro-government, has written about government extensively, but he was saying, at least with some of these guys, you know, they might want to tear down the fence, but they could tell you why the fence was there. He said the problem is some of these kind of 24-year-old, 21-year-old doge figures is they didn't know why these structures were there in the first place. If you just don't know anything about the government, nothing at all, but you've kind of worked in the private sector in some small company, that email seems completely innocuous and having anybody be upset about it seems like oh who are these people who don't tell the bosses what they did last week but the minute you kind of know how the government works you realize this thing could create a shit storm that people would put could put stuff in emails they could get them put in jail you know that if you if the irs person says oh i audited beyonce last week that's a jailable offense to say to even say that i remember interviewing Steve Bannon last year.

33:27And he was saying, you know, the problem with Doge is we just didn't cut enough money and it became performative rather than effective. And this sense of kind of stunts over substance is what comes away from it. I agree. Stunt, government by stunt is, you know, unedifying, but it somehow seems to be the way in which so much government works these days. Anyway, I think that's probably all we've got time for this week, Katie. Thanks all for joining us this week. We look forward to joining you again next week. In the meantime, from Katie and me, thank you very much and goodbye.